ATI Catalyst 9.2 Driver: Performance Express-Test. Page 4

Following Nvidia, the graphics division of Advanced Micro Devices released a new Catalyst driver version with 9.2 number. According to our newly established tradition, we decided to find out how gamers will be able to benefit from this new driver version.

Crysis Warhead

Instead of the promised 20% boost we suddenly lost up to 8% of the average performance at least for the single-processor Radeon HD 4870 1GB! The minimal performance also suffered. As for Radeon HD 4870 X2, the situation here is completely different: the average performance rate remained almost the same, while the minimal numbers increased quite noticeably, especially in high resolutions. However, the general performance level in 1920x1200 and especially 2560x1600 remained too low for us to speak of their practical value. Unfortunately, we have to state that ATI didn’t keep their word here.

F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin

In F.E.A.R. 2, however, we should give due credit to the ATI Catalyst driver developer team: the incorrect functioning of the CrossFireX technology has been fully eliminated and Radeon HD 4870 X2 performance increased by 250-350%! This is another piece of evidence how vulnerable contemporary multi-GPU systems are and how greatly their performance depends on the quality of the software part of the graphics subsystem.

As for the single-processor cards, their performance remained the same and the tiny differences we detected can be considered a measuring error.